Packs, Cliques, Families
by Gray Glube
Summary: A collection of 100 drabbles, rated PG through M. Various characters and canon pairings.
1. Bedpan

**Prompt:** 4. Bedpan

**Character(s):** Derek, Peter Hale, Nurse

**Word Count:** 1,039

**Rating:** PG

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>The curtain is drawn as he comes into the room, from behind it someone hums a song he doesn't know, an aide he assumes. He checks his watch and realizes belatedly he's arrived in the time gap where the patients get their morning care. He knocks on the door to announce his presence.<p>

"Yes?" It comes a moment before a head peeks from behind the curtain.

"I'm his nephew. I came to visit. I'll come back when you're finished. Sorry."

He turns in swift retreat but not quick enough to exit before the woman answers, "You can stay, if you'd like. You can talk to him while I do his care."

It's on a whim that he decides to stay. He debates with himself later if it was worth it or not.

The aide's uniform is different than the ones he normally sees. He mentions it as he takes up space on the other side of the bed while she raises the head of the bed with the remote.

"Nurses' aides wear grey with white overlay, LPNs wear plain white, and RNs wear white with the blue hems."

His eyes are drawn to the neck of her crisp uniform dress, it's rimmed with blue. She steps around the curtain to fill a basin. He eyes the shaving set-up lying on the overbed table.

"So you're a _real _nurse?" He asked thinking specifically about the red-headed nurse who had confronted him and McCall a night past and her white uniform.

She laughs, amused and rolls her eyes in a habitually way that doesn't come off as rude as he thinks it would if she were offended.

"Yes, I'm a real nurse. But don't say that to an LPN, they hate that."

He watches her wring out a washcloth in the basin and press it to his uncle's cheeks, softening the prickle hairs like a skilled barber. It's with an odd sort of fascination that he studies the way she goes about the process.

"Don't the aides do morning care?"

She makes a sound in her throat that he takes for the same response as a shrug.

"Normally, but they're short staffed on aides and so they hire agency nurses like me to come in for a few months to do whatever they are lacking staff for."

Her hands are confident as she applies the mousse into her hand and coats the face of her patient evenly; she wipes them off with a separate washcloth.

"So is it annoying when they ask you to do stuff like this?"

The razor moves with smooth strokes, she taps it out in the water. She's done it before, he's positive.

"I don't mind. It's nice because instead of having an even split of patients between _all_ of the nurses here the five of us agency ones are only with the patients that need more involved care."

"So you're like his personal nurse?"

"Mhmm."

She removes all lingering traces of the shaving cream and as she bustles around emptying and refilling the basin he studies her with a careful stare that he tries to make as flippant and casual as possible, so as not to come off intensely creepy.

Her hair is dark and her bun is tight and severe, the uniform is unflattering and too long but she is young and attractive in a sterile way and serious with her tasks.

He can smell the lingering trace of cigarettes and strong coffee on her under the scent of butterscotch that he recognizes as Obsession cologne, but it isn't subtle enough for her to have had it rub off from someone else.

It smells strange on a woman but not unpleasant.

"Can you teach me how to do some of his care?"

She looks up, curious.

"You'd like to help?" It sounds like a challenge and if he wasn't sure before he is now.

"Yes."

Her smile apples her cheeks and bares her teeth.

"Okay. Sure, we'll start with bedmaking."

His face must be awful enough to prompt her to laugh and she does it more at herself than the aghast expression he wears.

"I know, what's complicated about making a bed, right? Mitered corners," she explains as if he knows what mitered corners are and he shares her dislike of them.

"Has he ever said anything?"

He stares hard at the burn scars when he asks.

"…, No." Her pause is full of things she doesn't know how to put into words, it takes her a moment.

"But he communicates well. It takes time for him to respond, when damage occurs to the brain the pathways for thought to travel on change; some deteriorate, some disappear, and some branch off. The expressway is gone but the back-road is still open."

Nodding he tries to find understanding or even awareness in the bedridden and chair bound man's eyes, he finds blank dullness in its place.

"…I've been trying, but he never answers me."

The nurse nods and arranges bed linens in the order she will use them.

"It's hard to have patience when you don't have all the facts or understand them. Sometimes nurses and doctors forget that families aren't medically educated and they cut out the facts that to them aren't important because they already know them. So if I ever say anything and you have no idea what I'm talking about, tell me. Okay?"

Derek answers with a simple nod.

He takes off his jacket so it doesn't constrict his arms while she teaches him how to roll his uncle to the other side of the bed while she changes his bedding with him still in the bed.

It is harder than it looks despite the ease with which she goes through the motions. Quick and explanatory in each gesture, he keeps up but only just.

The thought that he is grateful crosses his mind, grateful that he does not have to care for his addled uncle every day, and the thought shames him.

Resolute he stays for the rest of the morning and learns how to bathe, feed, and perform passive range of motion. It is a burden and he'd been away long enough to forget that it's now his to bear.


	2. Stammer

**Prompt:** 48. Stammer

**Character(s):** Jackson/Lydia

**Word Count:** 419

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warning(s):** unwarranted fondling

* * *

><p>Sometimes it happens, the sensation around his throat. Constriction, like tiny hands pressing on his trachea that cuts off his words mid-consonant.<p>

A stammer is not like a stutter, it isn't inappropriate repetition of sounds it's just those tiny hands with a ligature around his neck.

It was worse once, no one really remembers because he's changed a lot from the kid that couldn't get through a single sentence in a read aloud in Junior High English when they went through books about the holocaust and runaway slaves and Elizabethan culture ripe with vengeance and tragic love.

They thought he was dumb because he would have to say he didn't know what a word was if he knew it would trigger a chokehold halfway through.

Of all the things he could say about what Lydia was he couldn't say cruel it was like the difference between a stammer and a stutter, persistence and cruelness.

He thinks the stammer is what made her fascinated with him, what got them started, she never did buy his line about not knowing a word, she'd call him a liar and smile a challenge at him until he yelled the truth at her, furious in his embarrassment.

Irritated with her drawing it out of him he didn't speak to her for weeks despite her verbal volleys in his direction in class and the halls.

He'd glare and she'd toss her hair.

It was during gym class and a round of hand ball with her on the opposite team that she shoved him, stole the ball and at his exhaling grunt turned to look at him with a blush high on her cheeks and a pout on her plump glossy lips, and threw the ball back into his hands while studying him with a look reserved for things pinned under glass; like butterflies and lab specimens.

He thought about it and didn't get it.

She mentioned that day once early in their pre-dating comingling amongst various friends they had in common that when he stammered it sounded like someone was surprising him, like during that game, the suddenness of his word drop-off, like he just came, like someone just grabbed the front of his pants.

He told her she was disgusting. Her hand cupped him through the denim of his jeans and he'd be damned if she wasn't right and that she didn't enjoy being right just as much as he liked the feel of her hand, the heat of her palm.

"Liar," she laughed.


	3. Golf Club

**Prompt:** 34. Golf Club

**Character(s):** Stiles

**Word Count:** 134

**Rating:** PG

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>His father wasn't home, the perfect time to misappropriate property. The basement was home to a year's supply of canned goods, unending piles of laundry, and the junk room.<p>

Back when his dad thought he could use a hobby that relieved stress golfing had seemed like the ideal choice, until of course he realized he had neither the patience nor the skill to enjoy it at the level elderly retirees did.

He choose the biggest heaviest one he could find not knowing or caring what the difference between a putter or a driver was, but he was confident in the fact that his father wouldn't even notice its absence.

Yes, he thought a golf club was much wieldier than a baseball bat or at least more damaging, stolen crime scene reports affirmed that much.


	4. Rhythmical

**Prompt:** 19. Rhythmical

**Character(s):** Kate Argent

**Word Count:** 111

**Rating:** M

**Warning(s):** Innuendo, language

* * *

><p>There's nothing better than the feel of it, whether it pops up or rears back, whether it kicks like a mule or slams up like a catapult, it's fuel, it's a fuck you, it's <em>hello<em>, it's visceral.

Bam. Bam. Bam. Bang. Ping. Whoosh.

Her breath escapes her on the last round, having held it in like she does right before she comes during sex. The climax of this exercise in pleasure is when she presses a button and finally gets to examine her marks close up.

She puts the assault rifle away and debates whether to try the Christmas gift Berretta or the favorite antique revolver her grandmother left her next.


	5. D

**Prompt:** 2. D

**Character(s):** Scott

**Word Count:** 261

**Rating:** PG

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>Though it's usually sometimes accompanied by notes that say things like the nonthreatening: 'Not your best work, extra help is on tues. and thurs, 3-4,' or the heart raising and grimace worthy: 'Grades like this aren't going to keep you on the team, Scott. Pull you head out of your ass please, kthx,' and then there's the ones that are simple commands: 'see me after class.'<p>

It doesn't really matter what the comment says, the letter in red seals his fate when he gets home. He has no idea where his mother got the idea but anything less than a B warrants her bringing out the dictionary and for however many C's or D's or F's that's how many pages of the letter he gets to copy down.

A page takes a good hour to get down.

On his chemistry lab about density that he didn't do he's got one page of F's.

His coach's exact words on his paper regarding inflation were 'abysmal,' and 'If I had a cat I'd line the box it urinates in with this, two extra laps around the field today.' A page of C's.

The trigonometry homework grades are enough to earn him three hours of sitting at the dining room table with a exponentially painful cramp growing in his hand for every word.

He spends his free period surrounded in a textbook laden huddle and an index card strewn workspace with a highlighter in his mouth, paper clips stuck to the cuff of his shirt and a leaky pen turning his calluses smurf blue.


	6. Juvenile Delinquency

**Prompt:** 44. Juvenile Delinquency

**Character(s):** Jackson, Danny

**Word Count:** 1,620

**Rating:** M

**Warning(s):** Drug use, language, innuendo

* * *

><p>They were smoking weed in his tree-house. It was his brother's weed and neither of them knew how to roll a joint properly, it took three tries to realize they were packing it too full and not wrapping it in the right direction after Jackson went to lick the wrong side of it to seal the paper ends together.<p>

Danny laughed as his best friend picked the pieces off his tongue with nubby nails scraping at his gums.

He thinks now that he wasn't even that high, now he's older and has, on occasion, been passed more than a few puffs around friends and gotten high enough to ride a bicycle while naked down the street at two in the morning.

Whether he really was impaired enough to share his secret or just liked to think he was it was then at fourteen lying out on the top of his old tree-house with his best friend talking about how much Lydia Martin pissed him off that Danny said, "Girls aren't worth my time, too much bullshit."

Jackson had stopped mid-word and passed him the joint and turned his head.

His heart tattooed a frantic, jerky rhythm against his ribs, he felt his lungs flutter. He looked up at the dark sky and away from Jackson's stare.

For a moment he wondered if he just lost his best friend. Wondered if the next words from Jackson's mouth would be 'fucking faggot,' as a joke and then Danny would just have to play it off and end their friendship with distance and poise leaving the other boy to figure out later what had happened when he found his balls again and made the choice to come out, again later.

Maybe directly next time instead of with insinuations.

But instead of a joke he got a question, "Listen don't bust my balls if you're not but are you like, and it's cool if you are, you know, gay?"

With a sigh of relief Danny took the extended joint and held the smoke in his lungs until it hurt.

"Yeah, I think I am. Well no, I mean, I definitely am."

"Okay."

"Okay?" He passed the blunt over.

"Yeah, okay. I was wondering if you were for a few months now."

"How come? What made you think I was gay?" He never thought he'd done anything overtly homosexual before, with a sudden revulsion he wondered if when he walked he swung his hips or sashayed, the idea of him strutting made him want to vomit in mortification.

"You stare," Jackson stated offhanded as if it was as common as breathing, which then in his own haze Danny realized staring was as normal as breathing.

"I stare?"

"Yeah, like I check out girls, sometimes we'll be talking and you'll look over at something, cause you get distracted and when you don't know I go to see what you're looking at and usually it's usually a dude."

"Do I really?" He mused on the piece of information while watching the tree limb above them sway.

"Uh-huh."

"Wow."

"You're still my best friend, just so you know."

"You're not my type, so you know."

The other boy sighed and laughed in relief, "Oh thank god!"

"Don't sound so relieved dude," Danny inhaled and passed the last puff off.

"Sorry, it's just like if you did it'd be like getting hit on by my sister," Jackson said seriously.

Danny snickered, "You don't have a sister, are you calling me a girl?"

"No! No. Just like you're my brother, we make great friends but if I was gay I don't know if I'd want you as a boyfriend."

"I feel the exact same way."

"What do you mean? What's wrong with me? Am I not attractive?"

"Who to girls, or gay boys?"

"Both."

"Girls stare at you all the time, they totally want to get in your pants man, personally though I think you're too needy. For my tastes at least."

It felt nice to tell Jackson that he was needy, which in Danny's mind translated to girly, he had the feeling the other boy knew that too.

"I'm needy?"

"Yeah. You're a drama queen. Plus you like to be in everyone's business. I'd probably punch you at some point and then get arrested for a domestic."

"Oh. Well, at least I'm good looking. That's something. On a scale of one to ten how good looking am I."

"Eh, a high seven to a high eight, maybe a nine but you'd have to get a little more cut. Girls don't like skinny guys."

"I like blondes."

"Yeah you _like_ blondes but you want to fuck the redheads," Danny laughed at his friend's grimace of disgust at the thought of the only redhead they knew.

"I do _not_ want to fuck Lydia Martin."

"Uh-huh. I like brunettes."

"I like big tits and tiny asses."

Danny wondered if the other boy knew he'd just described Lydia Martin's body type.

"I like arms and an ass that can bend steel."

"Dude!"

"Too much?"

"Just trying to figure out a way to get the image of a dude turning a crowbar into a horse shoe with his ass out of my head."

"That's an extremely detailed interpretation."

"If I said I was about to push you off this _gay_ tree-house would that offend you?"

"No, it would not. Technically this would be my gay tree-house. You know since I am. I know what you mean, and yes you can say things like, 'that shirt is gay,' around me. Just don't call me a faggot; you can call other boys faggots just not me."

"Thanks. When have I ever said faggot? Have I said it before?" I don't remember."

"I don't think so but when you start driving and have to yell at someone because they cut you off you can shout faggot at them."

"I think mother fucker has better ring to it."

"But if you do push me off my gay tree-house I'm telling Lydia how you jerk off into a pair of her panties."

"If I had a pair."

"Aha!"

"Don't sound so happy about it, I'm not."

"You totally want to jerk off into a pair of her panties."

"I'd rather have her jerk me off in my boxers."

"I'd rather have Senor Lopa jerk me off in my boxers."

"Thanks, now I'm never going to be able to pass Spanish this year."

"He is, how do I put this as gay as possible? He's yummy."

"Could you please just say he's hot, hearing you say another dude is yummy is weird."

"Why cause it's gay in a bad way? Like fake gay?"

"No, because it sounds like you want to eat him."

"I do."

"I meant like cannibalism."

"Oh. No I'd never eat dick, just swallow it."

"Now you're trying to make me smack you."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I guess I'd be embarrassed admitting something like that, in general not like if I was gay."

"So if you told me you wanted Lydia to swallow your dick you'd be embarrassed?"

"Yeah."

"Well do you?"

"What do you think?"

"Dumb question."

"Do your parents know?"

"Yeah."

"Does your brother?"

"He's the one that told them I was watching men having sex with each other online after everyone went to sleep."

"Sheesh. What did they do?"

"My dad told me to get my own computer, and then I could watch as much gay porn as I wanted without ruining the family computer."

"He was that cool about it?"

"Well, I think if I told him I was gay and had decided I was going to wear ass-less leather chaps and drop out of sports so I could learn how to tap dance and do hair it would have been a different story. He kind of just said, 'use a condom, don't get aids, and I thought that if I had sons I wouldn't have to say don't drop out and become a stripper but I guess it fits in here since you're gay,' and that was it."

"What did your brother say?"

"I don't think he cares much, actually. I guess he figures I don't care about his girlfriends so why should he put much thought into my love slash sex life."

"And your mom?"

"She was like 'at least we don't have to worry about you making us grandparents when we're in our forties,' and then she asked me if I would like to come shopping with her and I had to tell her I wasn't that type of gay."

"Yes you are a manly sort of gay."

"Oh, wait about that, I have a question."

"What?"

"Do I like, I don't know, walk funny?"

"Like, shaking your ass or something?"

"That's exactly what I mean."

"Not that I stare _at_ your ass, but if I'm behind you and we're walking and I'm watching you as a whole walk from behind, not just your ass…-,"

"I get it, you don't stare at my ass, get to the point."

"No you don't shake your ass when you walk. I'd tell you."

"Thanks."

"No problem. Think your brother is gonna notice his weed is gone?"

"Oh yeah, but it's cool.:

"He's going to kick your ass."

"No he won't, he'll just make me pay him back in my allowance twice over. He'll be pissed but you know. Weed is not like I thought it would be."

"I know what you mean."

"Wanna come over my house next weekend and get crunk?"

"What's crunk?"

"Crazy drunk."

"On what?"

"My mom loves wine coolers."

"I am not getting drunk off wine coolers, that's gayer than bending crowbars into horseshoes with your ass cheeks."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Thank you **_Sthrnchrm22 _**for the wonderful review, it made my whole day.


	7. Getup

**Prompt:** 39. Get-up

**Character(s):** Nurse

**Word Count:** 1,166

**Rating:** PG

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>The fact that she had kept the habit of ironing her uniform every morning gave her a sense of pride; laundry starch was one of her favorite things, though even to her it seemed odd to admit.<p>

Every other day she'd scrub her shoes clean with Ajax powder in the kitchen sink and polish them to white leather perfection, they were no longer pearl white but instead powder white and it made her smile, like it was a secret joke.

She'd always made her bun tight enough to pull at the corners of her forehead but not tight enough for a headache, hair spray reminded her of the laundry starch as she used it to keep down frizz and add a shellac finish to her perfectly neat, professional and tidy hair-do.

Her nails stayed short and filed and clean with clear polish. There were no runs in any of the twelve pairs of white stockings she kept sealed in a Ziploc bag next to her underwear.

She'd gone as far as to wear white undergarments and a slip that reminded her of the ones her grandmother had worn.

It was early enough that she could lounge, dressed in her underwear whites, stockings and robe watching the television until the reruns of the night news became the morning news, her mug of coffee was finished sometime between the crime report and the weather, she refilled it and lit her first cigarette of the day.

Her chart reports sat in room order with their medications listed on post-its. The other nurse's had all finished their care except for one that lagged behind and left certain tasks for the next shift after theirs. She would speak to her once she got to the facility.

As a nurse she had always enjoyed having a single patient over several, she wondered if the patients felt the same way. She'd made sure to give no one a heavy load based on their own nursing skills and patience. It was always when she was in charge that she chose the most laborious patients.

Unless they were larger than her, she'd rather put two nurses on one patient than break her back during a bed to chair transfer.

Peter Hale was a nice change of pace.

She felt that he didn't get enough of the attention that he should, it was hard for the other nurses, she knew that but it still saddened her that someone was left alone in a room for seven hours out of the eight hour shift. She made it a point to stay in the room for the whole shift.

His room had become like her office, she wondered if he minded.

The facility nurses complained about his nephew, she knew. She'd met him and understood why, he wasn't very patient or chatty, and rather it was more that he irritated himself much more than anyone else and was too terse for anyone to really care what he had to say. He just needed to work on his delivery and way of asking for things, she thought.

He had requested that his uncle have a one-to-one and before the facility had hired the group of nurses she came in with they had ignored the idea, there wasn't any real reason for it from a medical or safety standpoint.

It was on a social and emotional level that he had asked.

A few nurses, mostly the ones that were just out of school and under twenty-five and single, had understood but they were too swamped and it was hard to stay with the mute man who couldn't tell you what he wanted, or if he wanted for anything at all, when they had patients who were perhaps more vocal than they should be on everything they wanted and everything they weren't getting.

His chart said he had survived a CVA that resulted from a TBI due to an accident at his home.

She had wondered to herself what the reason was for his prescription of Haldol early in his admission and then the subsequent taper off of the drug and then the pattern of reorder of the prescription and the same taper off pattern again numerous times.

It didn't make sense as a drug therapy regimen, the doses were too far apart to be maintained at any sort of a consistent level, and as maintenance therapy the doses weren't large enough and it wasn't being used as a PRN prescription.

The math for the dosages and time of administration was easy but it was so convoluted that she wondered if the doctor had made a mistake that they didn't know about it, but it wasn't as if the levels were dangerous just ineffectual for what the drug was supposed to do. It was odd.

Maybe she was making a mistake in her math that she couldn't see or had made one while copying the chart scribbling into her notebook, she could have read it wrong.

She'd have to check the chart and not just her notes when she got to work and then have someone look over the math and confirm it was right, she knew it was but still it was very strange.

It was odd to see that the date of the order was from _after_ he arrived at the facility and not while he'd been in emergent care for his burn injuries from the same accident that had caused his stroke, she corrected the idea of stroke in her mind, they were being called 'brain attacks' now according to the new textbooks and medical encyclopedias.

She'd definitely have to take another look at his chart; maybe request the hospital transcript from his medical archives file.

The morning news came on, she watched it as she stepped into her uniform and left it unbutton while she padded to the bathroom in stocking clad feet to brush her teeth.

A newscaster reported on the latest animal attack that had happened in a school parking lot. They said that the two-hundred and thirty four pound mountain lion had been shot and killed by a police firearm liaison who was to be making a drop-off of handguns at the precinct later that night, she buttoned her uniform and put on her shoes as they pandered to the masses with the promise of an exclusive interview of the local hero after the break.

Something niggled on her mind, she kept picking at the thought that she was forgetting something until it clicked. Opening the top drawer of her nightstand she checked to make sure she had her own loaded and made sure the safety was on before slipping it back into its pocket holster.

Beacon Heights was a nice town but driving alone at night was always dangerous for a woman. She placed it in the glove box on the way to work.

Mountain lions weren't exactly cuddly and the fact that they showed up in _school_ parking lots wasn't exactly comforting.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** This is not the same nurse as the one we've been seeing yelling at Derek in the show, the reason I'm writing drabbles with a nurse in them is a way of trying to get across some Peter Hale back story.


	8. Quits

**Prompt:** 57. Quits

**Character(s):** Allison

**Word Count:** 219

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>Photography, watercolors, poetry, and archery had failed to capture her interest. After a lengthy discussion about sex and protection following the condom debacle she regretted most the fact that she hadn't told Scott of all the hobbies she hadn't quit.<p>

Namely yoga, sewing and belly dancing. She hadn't mentioned the belly dancing to anyone, the idea of another discussion of safe sex and the importance of not having it until she was thirty if her father ever found the costume in her bottom drawer under her dress patterns and fabric bolts was not a soothing one.

She wondered if the purple gauze skirt and jingling coin bra would have the intended reaction if she told Scott about them, maybe she'd just show him instead, whenever her dad decided to let her have the house to herself again, in a few weeks, or months if he was suspicious enough to think she'd have the 'brown eyed cutie,' over the moment she knew he'd be gone for the night.

Maybe she'd beg aunt Kate for the favor of a distraction.

On second thought she decided it was worth the wait. Half the fun was anticipation. She found her old book of the dance routines and reread it while practicing in her mirror so she'd be ready when the time came along.


	9. Grandmother

**Prompt:** 59. Grandmother

**Character(s):** Lydia, Derek

**Word Count:** 678

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** Language

* * *

><p>The smell never washed off, it was stuck to the inside of her pores even after she scrubbed herself pink in the shower with the yellow net sponge.<p>

It was a melded stink of blue wash hair dye, peas and corn, Bengay, floor wax, and flatulence. The smell of old people.

Her grandmother never used to smell like old people even though she was one when the Alzhiemer's had progressed from forgetfulness to not knowing her own name or what year it was. Her grandmother had stopped calling her Lydia a year ago and had since been calling her Lossie. It was unsettling to have her grandmother think of her as someone else.

She had asked her father who Lossie was; it was her grandmother's sister dead for decades.

Every visit tested her acting chops as she went through the same reminiscings over and over again. It upset her grandmother if she tried to bring her back to the present so after the second time of trying she'd stopped and her visits became less for herself and more for the senile old woman who never used to smell like old people.

Before it had gotten bad enough for her to end up in a place like this she had smelled like rose water perfume, pledge furniture polish, and face powder.

Lydia left after setting her Grandmother's hair and taking out the rollers, she redid her make-up and dressed her in the red blouse that now had a grape juice stain on it from a clumsy aide. It made her furious despite that the old woman was oblivious to the ruined fabric.

Before it had all happened Lydia remembered her Grandmother as a tyrant of a woman, she remembered her voice on the phone as she negotiated deals and closed transactions. She'd been a corporate lawyer who worked until she was seventy, saying on the day of retirement that everyone could piss on themselves for all she cared.

It was funny that Lydia remembered her grandmother saying it because life was ironic and it was her grandmother who was so far gone that she had started pissing on herself. She'd forgotten what the urge to go to the bathroom was, how it felt so she just ignored it until she couldn't hold it in anymore.

Before leaving she yelled at the aide who was older than herself for ruining the silk blouse and left without listening to her entire response.

In the parking lot she sent a text saying she wouldn't be able to go out after all that night to Jackson. It was a lie but she wanted to be alone for while, maybe sob to herself if her mother wasn't home and then redo her make-up and start on next week's chemistry labs.

She felt like she needed to have a good, moderately long cry and feel genuinely bad for a little bit. Her grandmother had made her a photo album that she hadn't taken out and flipped through in a long time.

Her smile was soft.

On the way to her car she looked at the other cars.

Jackson's silver Porsche was lovely but the black Mustang parked a row over from her was a fresh look at something nice, the ass of whoever was leaning against the driver's side wasn't bad either.

The owner of the car and the incredible ass turned and placed his back against the window blowing out smoke from his nostrils.

He looked familiar, not one of her boyfriend's friends but maybe Scotts or Stilinski's, he scowled at her staring. She glared and hit the switch to unlock her car.

She made a point to tear out of the parking lot by rushing through the single empty space on the other side of his car and turning like the large space was a hairpin curve.

The eyebrow raise and amused smile around his cigarette was enough of a stroke to her ego, she touched up her lip gloss at the stop sign and told her reflection that it was behaving naughtily.


	10. Newsworthy

**Prompt:** 98. Newsworthy

**Character(s):** Argent, Kate Argent

**Word Count:** 428

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** Language, innuendo

* * *

><p>His sister was unusually preoccupied with whatever was on the television.<p>

"What are you watching?"

"You." She looked positively giddy.

"What?"

"Nice shootin' tex."

He wiped a hand down his face and gripped the door frame.

"They blocked me in before I could get to the car."

"You look like you have to shit so bad while they're interviewing you," she commented looking back at the screen.

"I was uncomfortable."

"Fame does not suit you, makes you look pale." Her words took a condescending tone, chiding even with the little dip to the side her head did when she said it.

"Have fun amusing yourself with my discomfort."

"Oh, I will. Trust me. Where are you going, bed? You are such a grumpy old man."

He sighed and with raised eyebrows as if he had no idea what in the world was going on anymore responded with, "This grumpy old man has to go lecture his teenage daughter on not skipping school to go running through the woods all day and part of the night with the boy who she was most likely going to have sex with in her bedroom with the condom you gave her."

"I did not give her a condom; she acquired it all on her own. She was just gathering supplies, _just in case_."

He wished his sister many children of her own one day. Divine retribution would be sweet.

"Well maybe you shouldn't leave your condoms in plain sight."

"In my luggage under the bed is not plain site," she replied.

"Why do _you_ even have condoms?"

"Um, because I have sex. You remember sex right; I mean it's been what? A decade and a half since you've had any."

He wondered who on earth his sister would find to have sex with in this town. Not many men that were her type were roaming around.

"Not funny."

"It kinda is." She pouted.

"Let me go ground Allison again and then we'll talk."

"About how you think someone let a mountain lion loose in the school parking lot on purpose to ease people's suspicions about it not being a mountain lion killing people, and to throw us off the trail or put us on the trail that the Alpha is either smarter than a wild dog or that it has a partner in crime watching it's back."

"All of the above."

"I'm gonna need coffee."

"Put something in mine. It's been a long night."

"Got it chief," she tossed her hand back in a wave already on her way to the kitchen.


	11. Circumlocution

**Prompt:** 30. Circumlocution

**Character(s):** Stiles

**Word Count:** 365

**Rating:** PG

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>Sometimes he wondered if he would ever meet another person who got what he was saying. Someone who could get it without having to explain it out loud and get the affirmative from him that what he had just said was what they in fact had just simplified.<p>

It wasn't that he couldn't say things directly; mostly he just didn't want to. He thought that since he already spoke too much he may as well say it in a way that made people _have_ to listen.

If he just talked on and on without the mannerisms and tangents and hints he found it made him much less interesting to listen to.

He hoped that at some point he'd actually meet someone to banter with, preferably female. Someone who gave the perfect openings to insert his own brand of intellectual merit in and sneak in and leave her own behind.

It wasn't about actual intelligence, just clever word choice and diction, turns of phrase, insinuation, a subtlety of speech pattern.

When talking to Scott about the matter he found his best friend to be not only unreceptive but confused by the one-sided debate that he had carried on by himself with little input from the other boy besides nods and noncommittal grunts and groans.

He figured that the whole point of language was to communicate and communication was just a verbal expression of thoughts, and his thoughts were just as much tangentative as his speech so it was easier to let them out the way they wanted to be let out: confusing, contradictory, unrestrained.

It was, he decided finally that it was cathartic more than anything else and maybe easier too, to say everything he was thinking at once instead of having to let it out gradually. Once he said everything he'd thought he could happily sit down and shut up for the rest of whatever length of time he had to shut up for.

So, he came to the conclusion, it was better for him to keep talking even if cut off or shushed or smacked on the head because it was the fastest way to what everyone wanted; him to shut the hell up.


	12. Offal

**Prompt:** 61. Offal

**Character(s):** Derek

**Word Count:** 313

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>His sister had always been the better hunter of the two as far a speed was concerned, she'd also always been the more inclined of the pair to actually eat what she stalked.<p>

It was almost ironic the way he'd found her, half of her, like the unwanted part of the meal. Later when it was sunk in enough that she was really dead he found it amusing even in a morbid sort of way.

After killing a rabbit or on the odd occasion a deer she left the skin to rot on the forest floor along with the eyes, his sister couldn't stand eyes, she told him it was the consistency that bothered her and how after the first bite they turned to mush in her mouth.

Derek mused on the idea of his sister being eaten, it wasn't pleasant and the idea that the Alpha found at least part of her unsavory and later thrown it up and flushed it away down the toilet after he shifted back made him furious enough to add another two miles to his run to work off the red coloring his vision.

Once he'd caught his sister trying to unclog the toilet before they went to school one day, she'd been bashful about the ordeal and blushed when their father had had to come and fix it himself, she'd gotten a punishment she wouldn't soon forget when a Doberman's paw was suctioned out.

He'd found out on his own later that animal paws were for the most part indigestible.

The memory of his sister getting sick from running down and eating a dog when she was still a kid made him shake his head and laugh, not able to help it.

It clicked then, years after the fact why she used to giggle at 'Missing Dog' posters.

He hoped she gave the bastard heart burn.


	13. Vibes

**Prompt:** 96. Vibes

**Character(s):** Kate Argent

**Word Count:** 541

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** Language

* * *

><p>Men gave all sorts of things away about themselves without ever knowing it, it was like they just couldn't hide it, not in any intelligible way in any case.<p>

The metaphorical and metaphysical 'vibe,' was less gut feeling and more careful observation. Kate never placed much stock in gut feelings, sentimental or otherwise. A gift for reconnaissance was all a girl really needed to dissect a man.

With practice it became more habitual than for any real purpose.

Her brother: The female dependent type. He had basically been the hallmark example, the paragon, the epitome, the carbon copy of every other man she'd ever seen depend heavily enough on a woman that without said woman he may as well be a little boy again. It was one of those 'ingrained at birth,' things. Chris would probably fall into a drunken stupor never to see the light of day or pick up a shotgun or crossbow with the same passion if his wife wasn't there to tell him what he was doing was good, and right, and his _legacy_ and whatever other crap he needed spewed at him to grab his balls and man up.

Derek Hale: The scrappy puppy type. He may be a tough cookie and play at being stoic but underneath the leather jacket and the black Camaro he had as many animal tendencies that he couldn't control as the ones he did. If he couldn't control it he wouldn't bother with it and that was his problem, she thought, caged raged didn't disappear it just grew and found its own way out. He was surviving but just barely, and only because he had the obligation too. He might get through it all but when it was done he'd be as hard to put back on the lease as a dog you gave up training.

Scott McCall: The unintentional asshole type. He was oblivious because he had no life experience with other people's feelings. He was nice and cute but he couldn't meld his personal life with his _personal_ life and put a girl at ease, he had no finesse and without the style of delivery to soften his faults he became a disappointment, an 'almost there' kind of perfect that just couldn't pull itself together fast enough for girls not to have to cry over him because he's got them but doesn't know how to handle it.

Stiles Stilinski: The passive-aggressive type. He knew he did enough for everyone that when he needed a favor he'd call it in. It was only if he didn't get what he wanted that he resorted to begging and then anger and then humor and finally he'd let his most cutting remarks go unchecked. He played nice more often than it was good for a guy to play nice and it was the lack of balance that made him quickly become lazy and mean and cruel in his dejection.

Putting the same critical eye on her own self she can understand why she hasn't found someone yet, she's got the bitch vibe down pat, coupled with an unrealistic ideal for what a man should be and severe competitory drive, her contradictory image and attitude. She wonders where all the _real_ men went.


	14. Neoprene

**Prompt:** 3. Neoprene

**Character(s):** Allison Argent, Kate Argent

**Word Count:** 857

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** Language, innuendo

The thing about finding a bathing suit that was 'dress code permissible' was that it was about as tiring as it was necessary. Her old one was from the second out of three schools that she went to during ninth grade, she'd hope it would still fit and she'd be able to forgo the whole shopping excursion but it had a rip in the side seam and the way her hips had grown without her noticing made the bottom of it crawl up and into places she'd rather they not.

"It's supposed to cling, for better traction," her aunt Kate had explained from outside the dressing room door as she listened to her niece complain that the suit she'd pulled off the rack was not as modest as it had looked on the hanger.

"It's gym class, not an Olympic event," Allison informed her staring at the stretch of the bathing suit across her torso, her lungs hurt from the constriction of the suit.

There was a snort from outside the door and the creak of her aunt Kate leaning on the support next to the door.

"Okaaay, then it's supposed to cling to give the boys in your co-ed gym class wood, they're going to look anyway."

Allison watched her reflection grow more and more red by the idea, she pressed her hands to her cheeks and struck a pose in the mirror with a hip cocked and a knee bent softly, she piled her hair onto the top of her head and studied herself.

"Cold water and bathing suits are basically soft core porn territory. You might as well make it so they have to stay in the pool for long enough to avoid the embarrassment. It's going to happen, have a little fun with it."

"Lalalala! Can't hear you!" She shouted at the older woman outside the door.

"What, it's the truth!"

"Well I'd rather wear a wet suit than this," she frowned at the mirror and reached for her bra.

"What's wrong with it?"

She pulled the legs of her jeans right side out and shook them out and then did the same to her shirt.

"I don't know, the last one was too baggy and this one is way too tight. My boobs look like they're about to split it."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Me too! Their so tiny and they're like busting out."

"Let me see."

"No, I'm changing and going to look for another one," she'd feel a little ridiculous standing in the open doorway of the dressing room in a bathing suit and her striped fuzzy socks.

"Just let me see."

"Don't laugh," she warned. She slid the door lock and opened the door with a shrug, her eyes on the ground.

"No promises," warned her aunt before she'd stepped all the way out.

Kate cracked up and shook her head at the bathing suit. Allison crossed her arms over her chest and scratched at one shin with the opposite sock covered foot.

"Hey! It's not funny," she demanded.

"It's really is," Kate nodded sympathetically.

"Is it that bad?" She turned to look at it in the mirror again.

"It looks like something your grandmother would wear."

"Are you kidding?"

"It's not skimpy enough. Or not skimpy enough it the right places, there's too much fabric on top and bottom. You're supposed to have to pull your bathing suit out of your ass after swimming a lap, otherwise it's no good."

"I don't thi…-"

"Here, this one. It'll hold your boobs and give you an ass," she took the sporty swimwear from her outstretched hand with a frown.

"What's wrong with my ass?"

"You don't have one."

"Hahaha. You are so funny," she went in and slammed the door with more force than she meant, the line of dressing stalls shook from it.

"Just get changed and then show me."

"It's better but, argh. Why did I sign up for swim this quarter, in gym?"

"To ogle boys without shirts on?"

"Well if I'd known it'd be this much trouble I wouldn't have bothered."

"A little discomfort is worth the sight of fifteen shirtless, sport-enthused, wet boys. You're lucky when I went to highschool we didn't have co-ed gym classes."

"That doesn't sound so bad, right now."

"It was horrible, when there's no boys around girls think it's okay to stop shaving their legs. You should have seen some of the growth on some of my graduating class."

"Ewwww," she supplied as she stepped out again and turned in a circle. It was better than the last and it didn't feel like it was going to crack a rib every time she took a breath.

"Looks good. We're buying it. Hurry up and get dressed, we still have to go to the salon after this."

"The salon?"

"I made you an appointment once I heard you were doing swimming in gym."

"My hair's just going to dry out again, because of the chlorine," Allison pulled on her jeans and hooked her bra back into place.

"It's not a cut and color; you've got a two-o'clock bikini wax."


	15. Thrasher

**Prompt:** 93. Thrasher

**Character(s):** Scott

**Word Count:** 208

**Rating:** M

**Warning(s):** mattress humping, language

* * *

><p>The dreams are the worst part of the transition from normal teenage boy to animal. Everything's amplified and he dreams in vivid technicolor, everything is sharp and sensual in a way that he never thought dreams could be.<p>

The way the moon's changes reflect in the way his sleeping mind weaves thoughts and secrets and fantasies together on the other side of his eyelids.

Each night, in a progression he's getting used to, things become faster, angrier, wilder, more perverse and more depraved. Less teenage boy and more beastly predator.

He breaks things in his sleep that are within reach, he traps himself in his sheets, wrestles himself from the fabric grasp of bedding and boxers and tries desperately to rut the mattress underneath his hips.

It's been too many times that he wakes up with a wince and a groan to find that he's rubbed his cock near raw from his one sided mattress frotting.

It's been too many times that he wakes up because he's clawed himself and has watched his skin knit itself back together, the deep furrows in ruined tissue mending and filling themselves.

It's been too many times that he wakes up and finds himself in a place other than his own bed.


	16. Acquiesce

**Prompt:** 79. Acquiesce

**Character(s):** Lydia

**Word Count:** 1,521

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>She wasn't going to be someone's rebound, or their punching bag, or their clown.<p>

His spare house key was on her key ring and in a wild moment a pride and fury she almost ripped it off and flung it at him, she hope it detached his cornea. Almost, meaning she hadn't done it, but she'd thought about it with violent glee.

Calling her mother and telling her to pick her up in the vintage mustang reserved only for use in special occasions during third period with a quick text she knew she was on her way to nurturing her fury into something useful, something that would keep her from debasing herself or acting like a dumb female who couldn't move beyond a boy no longer wanting her.

The blaring of a horn outside in the parking lot stopped the whole class' chattering, her mother had arrived. Rising from her seat like a queen, she informed her English teacher that it was for her. The classroom's wall phone rang to inform her teacher that she was being picked-up as she strode to the door all heels and swagger, the door shutting swiftly behind her with everyone's eyes on her back, including his.

She knew his desk had a clear view of the parked Mustang and as her mother stepped from the driver's side leaning on the open door in sunglasses and a winning smile, Lydia caught the keys tossed at her with a swift hand, her mother moving to the other side of the car and she took the driver's seat.

With a rev of the engine and a quick whip of the wheel she peeled out of the parking lot while setting her sunglasses in place, she didn't have to look at the window to know he had watched her_ not _watching him.

She had smiled in true joy at the notion.

Her mother didn't ask what had spurred the impromptu girls' day, she knew her daughter knew when it was alright to take a day for herself and in truth Lydia had already collected her assignments for the day and had handed all the ones due in with an apology that she would be missing class.

It was done in a state of half-awareness, like she had been on autopilot after Jackson had rubbed her pride raw.

She bought a new set of workout clothes and sneakers, five new sets of laced and ruffled undergarments and a book on war tactics.

Her mother seemed amused but went along with it all, happy to see her daughter suddenly so sparked by something.

It was time to reevaluate what exactly she wanted from herself, Lydia decided, and what she wanted was to become a fitness queen with enhanced flexibility, an alluring temptress who wore her best frills to bed even when there was no one to see them and an expert in the art of attrition.

It certainly didn't hurt to work out more and she hated to think she'd ever wear a single piece of lingerie she had bought especially for the purpose of it being for Jackson for someone else and of course she felt the urge to educate herself further on the tactics needed to utterly decimate an enemy.

She would never go after Allison or whoever else it could be he had thought to trade her in for, she didn't work that way. Sabotage was a grade school ambition. All she wanted was retribution. Not revenge but an even balance of the scales, an even balance of which she always ended up with more and him less, because she was worth more than what he had done, what he was_ going_ to do.

When she got home she pulled her closet open and surveyed its contents, every so often she took a piece of clothing out and let it drop at her feet. She had never let him buy her anything like clothing but that didn't mean certain garments didn't have his presence surrounding them.

Things he had always said she looked good in piled on the floor, bras and panties and silk slips slipped over her fingers as she let them dropped haphazardly from her loose grip, when she finished she separated them into how they would be washed.

It took her the rest of the afternoon to wash and dry and fold everything and place them in neat piles.

She left Allison a message saying she had some things she was going to donate to the good will bin and if she wanted to come by and look through to see if she liked something she was welcome to whatever she wanted.

She hoped Allison took it all and wore it all. She hoped Jackson noticed, she hoped it made him burn in resentment.

Changing, she did a yoga workout from the DVD collection her mother had that had her sweaty and mumbling down at the floor at how the instructor was a sadistic bitch every few moves.

Collapsing to the floor when it was finished she showered and savored the heat of the water for twice the time she usually would.

She got dressed, redid her make-up and smiled to her reflection the workout making her muscles deliciously tight.

She mused on the idea of getting a pull up bar for her doorway but wondered if it would ruin the doorframe, she'd have to ask someone, maybe Danny or even Scott. Danny would mention it to Jackson who would probably be confused as to why she would ask and think she was buying it as a gift for someone since obviously he wouldn't think she'd actually bought it for herself, and asking Scott was simply a means to an end that was made of make-outs and heavy groping in a school hallway.

Lydia figured to let Allison decide which one she wanted before she made a move, it was only gracious after all, if Allison choose Scott then she got him and Jackson would be alone and Lydia would smile at his misfortune and knock him down when he was already in the metaphorical dirt her foot on his head burying his face in it.

And if Allison chose Jackson that left her to at least toy with Scott, she wasn't sure he would ever be over Allison and Lydia was not about to let herself stumble into that sort of situation where she wasn't the one being pined for.

She spent the rest of the day restructuring, she changed her relationship status on her online profile, packed all of the things of his she had in a box, put his key in a plain white envelope and sealed the box without any note or added flourish besides making everything fit tidily and neatly inside.

The plan had been to leave it on his step while he was at the game and she would have had his father not come to the door to say hello.

He had not gone to the game due to a work meeting that he was just on his way to, when he asked what she was doing there she handed him the box and asked him to return it to Jackson.

Beyond a simple goodbye she had not thought to continue the chat but when his father asked what was in the box she informed him it was just a few of his son's things that she had had at her house or in her locker that she was returning.

His father seemed to understand at once.

"He'll realize his mistake and apologize within the week; he probably deserves you telling him what's what for whatever it is he's done."

With a soft smile Lydia raised her eyebrows and took off her sunglasses with her smile growing.

"Actually I think it's going to take him a lot longer than week to realize his mistake since he seemed so sure about making it when he told me he was dropping some dead weight in his life this morning."

She replaced her glasses and opened her car door as her now ex-boyfriend's father stood dumbly at the top of the driveway unsure of what to say in response.

"Tell your wife I said hello," she called out the open window as she left with one smooth curve from the driveway, grinning to herself.

It felt good to just let things happen sometimes, like freedom, or a release.

Let someone else make the decisions, she thought to herself as she drove around passing the school once and not giving the field more than a cursory glance.

She turned on the radio and chose an upbeat country song to drive the long way home too.

She wasn't going to cut her hair or dye it, or dress differently, or cry.

She was beyond it. She'd skipped all the way to the end of the grief process to acceptance within the past hour.

She was going to be fine; she was going to look _fine_, plenty of men not enough time, but enough options to make it worth her while in the end.


	17. Anniversary

**Prompt:** 29. Anniversary

**Character(s):** Chris Argent, Mrs. Argent

**Word Count:** 336

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** Violence against animals

* * *

><p>They had met at his father's kennels on the very day he had related to Scott the story of the rabid dog. Even back then she'd worn her hair boyishly short and cropped close. He hadn't thought much of it then, just eyed her as one eyes something that is out of place or curiously put in position, girls besides his mother and his sister were a rare sight. Her father was a dog trainer and was looking to pick up new stock.<p>

He thinks that the moment his grandfather came down from the farm house on the hill with her father and his, rifle in hand and casually brought them all over to the small kennel where the snarling dog tried in vain to free itself and shot it casually as if the occurrence happened every day and she never turned her head or cried out in pity for the dead animal that was when he fell into the first stirrings of love with her.

Or maybe later as she and his mother stood in the kitchen cooking.

Or later when he and she stood in the two person assembly line of washing and drying the dishes.

Then there was the moment he knew absolutely that she was the woman he would marry one day when they shot skeets in the woods at sunset and she beat his nine perfect shots with twelve.

There was something about a woman who could be as hard as man with a gun in her hands or a soft as a girl who knew how to cook.

There was something in the way that her smile came when he asked her to mend a rip or a tear in his collar or the way she laughed in glee while unwrapping a Christmas present of a revolutionary era pearl handgrip pistol.

He stands wondering what to get her for their seventeenth wedding anniversary as he meanders through Homewares and Hunting accessories, trying to figure out how he got so lucky.


	18. Fixative

**Prompt:** 1. Fixative

**Character(s):** Danny

**Word Count:** 270

**Rating:** PG

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>Everyone has their roles and his, he has long since discovered, is in the tightly small niche of the glue that pieces things back together, the middle ground, the devil's advocate, and the fount of useful advice and comparative remonstration.<p>

He is the necessary viewpoint on the team, in his social group, in his family, he is one of the few cast as the wise, the knowledgeable, the outside input.

Danny knows that the pay-off is that he is the one who is always likeable always stable in conflict and issue.

The negative to his position in the social hierarchy is that it makes him hopelessly sexless and objectified by his roles.

He is the fixture that holds it all together, the mortar that fills the cracks in the foundation that threaten to topple things.

It's comfortable, and everyone abides by the unspoken terms of his role and is relied upon as the only thing, the only person, who is unchanged by fights and successes and failures of everyone around him.

But the problem is that comfortable gets boring and he wants to be somewhere where nobody has the expectation of him to be stable, he wants to be unbalanced and partial to one side more than another, he wants the conflict of a relationship or of being an absolute asshole not only when it's called for but because he simply wants to.

He wants to stop putting everyone else together and fixing things they break.

He wants to be brash and hasty and have someone pick up after him every once in awhile.

He wants to make an impact.


	19. Syllabic

**Prompt:** 21. Syllabic

**Character(s):** Nurse at LTCF

**Word Count:** 566

**Rating:** PG

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>After awhile everyone is categorized by convenience and necessity, she had thought during school and lecture and clinical rotations that she would never be so crass as to identify people by their disease alone, but the truth is that it is as simple as it is mind numbing and in this job everyday becomes less meaningful than the one before it unless a disaster occurs.<p>

She wonders if this is what other people of a trade feel as their lives slowly start to isolate into parts, categories, and tiny boxes of classification.

She wonders if this is what it is like for her patients, she knows it isn't but she understands that theirs is a different sort of classification process to their lives, their activities, their thoughts.

A disease affects everything, coats all things in life in a tarnish of routine and symptoms.

The lucky patients are the ones who are unaware of it.

The lucky patients are the ones the rest of the world views as the worst off but she knows that blissful unawareness of what is happening is as good as it gets.

The lucky patients of the world are the Mr. Hales, the TBIs, the CVAs, the unresponsive, the comatose, the ones who don't know that they are defined by the shortened acronyms of their diagnosed disease.

There is no complacency for them, only mute time, habits don't form because nothing comes of their temporary consciousness, and there are no differences between the days or minutes or seconds.

Awareness brings no such ease of existence.

She wonders if for patients like him that life confined to a chair or a bed with no ability to communicate or correlate experiences is like a dream, like a goldfish with a three-second memory, or if it's a hell built up of confinement and isolation.

But the mind adapts, the brain moves connections and neurons and tries even though evolution hasn't gone as far as self-healing of the nervous system yet to fix what is wrong.

Mind over matter, mutation and stabilization, the ideas leave her with the perverse desire to dissect someone's brain, go back to school and learn how to splice genes, rebuild and retune the chemical properties that leave such sad cases stagnating in a suspended temporary temporal state.

She thinks that if she could do such things, to crack the code, so to speak, would mean that there would no longer be a need to classify people by letters put together in simple unpronounceable words like TBI, that it would make every day less formative to a habit of complacency.

Her break is over and she goes back to the unit to administer the afternoon medications, crushing up the pills she is to put into Mr. Hale's g-tube she comes to the understanding that there really is no difference between him and her in the long run, the unconscious form the same unity of mind as the conscious do, it's just a different type, the unconscious devolve into a state of constant unawareness and the conscious form habitual motions to collate the mass of stimulus information so they don't overload their brains.

It a metaphysical, philosophical deduction that has her thinking about it for too long to be fun anymore.

She waves it off and goes back to work.

Her patient stares at the ceiling when she tells him that she thinks too much.


	20. Clangor

**Prompt:** 12. Clangor

**Character(s):** Jackson, Lydia

**Word Count:** 380

**Rating:** T

**Warning(s):** None

* * *

><p>Everything about her is loud. The way her hair is done up in Shirley Temple ringlets, the bright intimidating scarlet on her nails, the way her skirt falls in white pleats, the clean unstained canvas of her tennis shoes, the leather jacket, the gloss on her lips that catches her hair when the wind blows.<p>

She's a symphony of color and sound even when she's not speaking, her presence rings out in waves and he can't help but stare and listen to the way the leather rasps smoothly as she tosses it into the fence behind her, the way her shoes skid on the court as she runs and goes for the ball, the click her nails make together when she adjusts her grip on the racket.

Her breathing is labored at the end, she grunts as she swings at the ball and the resounding thwack and pop it makes on the other side of the court is his death knell.

If she hadn't already hooked him she has now, Jackson can't help being taken in by her presence. Vivacious and unrelenting she rings and reverberates and he watches her swaying and sounding the way someone watches and hears a bell ring.

She a country club queen and he was born for polo shirts and monogrammed towels, just like her.

He knows Lydia sees him walking across the courts towards her, he delights that she misses a tennis ball that shoots out from the machine as he stands on the edge of the white lined court.

Her next swing is harsh and angry and it's the last ball out of the machine.

"What do you want?"

It doesn't sound vicious, just curious as she starts picking up balls, he comes up and starts scooping the ones she goes for up first into his hands.

"Verse me?"

She straightens and grins like she's already won.

"You're going to lose."

He does but it's a fair trade for the way her tongue curls around his later on the abandoned golf course, every jab of her tiny pink tongue and press of her cherry flavored mouth against his is less of a tolling than it is a chiming, and he thinks that he really likes being the one to 'ring her bell.'


End file.
